Black Friday traffic heavy despite early openings

Saturday

Nov 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 30, 2013 at 10:12 AM

Any fears that Thanksgiving evening store openings would eat into Black Friday sales seemingly were put to rest as retailers touted healthy traffic during both shopping periods, providing a lucrative launch to the holiday shopping season.

Tim Feran, The Columbus Dispatch

Any fears that Thanksgiving evening store openings would eat into Black Friday sales seemingly were put to rest as retailers touted healthy traffic during both shopping periods, providing a lucrative launch to the holiday shopping season.

At Polaris Fashion Place, “crowds arrived rapidly as soon as we opened (on Thursday) at 8 o’c lock, and there was great traffic throughout the evening,” said Michael Minns, general manager. “It was steady until about 2:30 (a.m.), then (Black Friday) looked like a regular Saturday. It was very steady business and stayed that way.”

At Easton Town Center, “overall traffic is trending up from last year,” said spokesman Brock Schmaltz. “With stores opening as early as 7 p.m. (on Thursday), we have experienced consistent, steady traffic as opposed to mass, periodic spikes that we saw in years past.”

It was the same story at the Mall at Tuttle Crossing.

“As far as traffic in the mall, it’s been great all day. Lots of bags,” said Samantha Brawand, the mall’s marketing director.

A crowd of people was waiting when the mall opened its doors at 8 p.m. on Thursday, she said. Last year, the mall didn’t open until midnight.

“It actually didn’t slow down until about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, and then we got another rush about 6 a.m.,” she said. “It was definitely higher than our expectations. Lots of families are out today.”

The National Retail Federation will release survey results on Sunday about the shopping season’s opening, but federation President and CEO Matthew Shay said that anecdotal evidence indicated that it was a success.

“By all appearances, and according to CEOs I’ve spoken with across the retail spectrum, it looks like the early opening of stores on Thanksgiving and the traditional start of holiday shopping on Black Friday is breaking new records, including what companies are seeing through their digital channels,” Shay said.

The retail federation estimates that holiday sales will increase 3.9 percent this year to $602 billion.

At Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, “it was a great night,” as the retail giant served more than 22 million people, said Bill Simon, president and CEO.

From 6 to 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart processed more than 10 million register transactions in its stores. Wal-Mart sold 2 million televisions, 1.4 million tablets, 300,000 bicycles and 1.9 million dolls during the period that included Thanksgiving and Black Friday morning.

“If our traffic was any indication, people clearly want to shop on Thursday evening,” Simon said. “The biggest surprise for me was that the tone of the evening is much different than it was when it was early Friday morning opening. Early Friday morning was frenetic (in past years). The evening was more relaxed. There were more families out.”

Not all was wonderful at Wal-Mart, however.

“One of the trending hashtags (in social media) is ‘#walmartfights,’??” said Dave Shaw, a

social-media strategist at Resource, a Columbus-based digital-media company. “People are posting police reports and images of people handcuffed on the ground.”

The Los Angeles Times reported, for example, that a Rialto, Calif., police officer was injured on Thursday night after trying to break up a fight among shoppers outside a Walmart store during a Black Friday sale. Two people were arrested.

Wal-Mart wasn’t the only retailer to become a crime scene. In Romeoville, Ill., a driver outside a Kohl’s was shot by police after dragging a police officer in the parking lot on Thanksgiving evening. The incident evidently began with a shoplifting attempt.

Those incidents were the exception, however. Retailers took steps to bolster security, create systems to manage demand for door-buster bargains and make customers calmer and more comfortable with beverages and access to portable toilets.

Sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday will increase 2.2 percent to

$40.5 billion, IBISWorld Inc. predicted.

The effects on Black Friday of Thanksgiving openings appeared to be much ado about nothing, said Eric Daniel, creative director at Fitch, a design consultancy.

“I was reading about the demise of Black Friday, but I didn’t see that at Menard’s on Morse Road,” Daniel said. “It was amazing in there on Friday. People were buying everything.”

Part of the reason the early openings succeeded was a shift in focus by retailers, said Dennis Disser, who tracks consumer goods at SBC Advertising.

“Toys R Us has played up taking kids toy shopping,” Disser said. “That’s a little different from years back when people were camping out to get deals and left the kids home. That’s interesting because people are going to buy more categories if the whole family is with you.”

With such success, the Thanksgiving night openings are likely to become the new standard, Disser said.

“I’ve heard pros and cons about stores opening on Thanksgiving evening, but, once you start down this path, it will become the standard,” Disser said. “Trends start, and if they work, I don’t think you ever go back.”

One store that decided not to jump the gun on the traditional start of the holiday shopping season — and seemed to have great success in spite of it — was outdoor retailer Cabela’s.

In the pre-dawn dark and cold early yesterday, an estimated 2,000 people waited patiently for the Columbus location’s first Black Friday.

What did they want? “Camo, ammo, guns — oh, and gift bags,” said Jake Starr of Dublin.

The gift bags were an inducement to arrive early, and the retailer handed out almost $10,000 worth of items in those packs.

Glenn Gomberg, from the West Side, was one of the first in line.

“I’m going to get a shotgun and a refrigerator. I’m saving like $300 on both.”

The line stretched almost completely around the store, and the parking lot was filled.

So long was the line that Cabela’s opened a few minutes earlier than planned at 4:55 a.m. Unlike some other stores that let a limited number of shoppers in at a time, Cabela’s allowed the vast line to file in, assuming that the size of the store and fast pace of the shopping would keep everything even.

In fact, it was only a few minutes after the doors opened — at 4:58 a.m. — that the first shoppers walked to the check-out lines, said Derrek Shively, retail marketing manager.

While many in line had stayed up all night, they weren’t planning to shop and go home.